


A Thought a Day 
for Lent 


By 


Rev. James M. Gillis, C.S.P. 





THE PAULIST PRESS 


New York 
401 West 59th Street 


~~ 


a PS 
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not oe | 





A THOUGHT A DAY 
FOR LENT 


RBYV +) JAMES ivi GILETS,C.S-P, 


New York 
THE PAULIST PRESS 
401 West 59th Street 


Nthi Obstat: 
ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, S.T.D., 
Censor Librorum. 


Imprimatur: 
PATRICK J. Haves, D.D., 
Archbishop of New York. 


New York, January 19, 1923. 


CopyrIGHT, 1923, spy “THE Missionary Society oF ST. PAUL THE 
APOSTLE IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.” 


FIRST DAY (Ash Wednesday) 


Gov’s OWN SERMON 


“Remember, man, that thou art dust.’’—Roman 
Missal. 


HERE is a sermon that is always being preached, 
not by the tongue of man, but by the myriad 
voices of God’s vast universe. Day and night, with- 
out ceasing, in every land, among all peoples, in the 
universal language of nature—the language that is 
foreign to none of the children of men—God is preach- 
ing his sermon. He is whispering it upon every 
breeze, booming it with every thunderclap, flashing it 
upon the clouds with the lightnings. His message is 
trailing its way in a blaze of fire across the sky “from 
the rising of the sun to the going down thereof.” All 
nature is a panorama created to illustrate the sermon 
of God, painted in colors gay and somber by turn to 
catch the fickle eye of man, the spectator. All the 
universe is one vast stage for the enacting of the 
drama that God has written. All human history is 
a pageant, a never-ending procession passing before 
the bewildered eyes of mankind, and upon every ban- 
ner in that pageant is written the motto that God 
would have us read. And yet this obvious lesson is 
one we never learn. The sermon is one to which we 
will not listen. The pageant passes in review, but we 
gaze aS in a stupor, seeing but not understanding. 
For the sermon, the lesson, the play, the pageant, 
the spectacle, is “Life and Death.” 


SECOND DAY 


THIS LENT, Not NExT LENT 
“Now is the acceptable time.”—2 Cor. vi. 2. 


HERE is a decided ring of modernity, one might 
almost say of American modernity, in that phrase, 
“Now is the time.” If there is one thing that the 
alert American business man has learned above all 
‘things else, it is the value of the present moment. 
His favorite slogan is “Do it now.” If there be one 
vice that he despises above all else, it is procrastina- 
tion. “Let others,” says he, “cultivate the manana 
habit. Let them say, “To-morrow, and to-morrow.’ 
We say, ‘To-day.’ ” 
Much eloquence has been expended by preachers 
on the folly of deathbed repentance. But perhaps no 
one has hit it off so aptly as Young: 


Procrastination is the thief of time; 
Year after year it steals, till all are fled, 
And to the mercies of the moment leaves 
The vast concerns of an eternal scene. 


The deathbed penitent leaves “vast concerns” to 
the “mercies of the moment.” 


- 


THIRD DAY 


CONVERSING WITH GoD 


E cannot persuade the natural man of the reality 
of mystical experiences. He will say: “Imag- 
ination. Delusion. Catholic saints, Quakers, Quiet- 
ists, Swedenborgians, Theosophists, are to be placed 
in the same category—fanatics all.”” Meanwhile, we 
shake the head and say, “No. You misunderstand.” 
“Then explain to me,” says he. “I will listen. Ex- 
plain how you know that God talks to you.” The 
mystic answers, ‘“‘We cannot explain. We know be- 
cause we know,” and the skeptic laughs and says, “TI 
thought so.” But how can he ever be taught? He 
will not try. He will not submit to the discipline. He 
will not go into silence. He dreads solitude, espe- 
cially the solitude of the soul. He cannot hear the 
voice of God unless God thunders at him. But God 
is a Spirit, and the Spirit breathes—whispers. “He 
breathed on them.” To hear God, one must be quiet 
enough to hear a breath, and they that will not be 
quiet, will never hear. 

There are objects that cannot be seen by certain 
eyes. There are truths that cannot be proved to cer- 
tain minds. Music and poetry, for example, mean 
nothing to those who have not the soul to hear and 
to feel. So of the voice of God. You cannot hear it 
unless your ear is attuned, unless your soul is trained. 
You attune the ear and train the soul in solitude, in 
reflection, in meditation, in prayer. 


FOURTH DAY 


WAITING ON GOD 


S God a slave who must go when He is sent and re- 
turn when He is called? Men say to a slave, “Be 
gone! Out of my sight! When I need thee, I shall 
call thee, and when I call, come instantly.” So we 
dismiss God for a day, a week, a year, and we expect 
Him to leap from the ground or to descend from the 
sky when we clap our hands or call, “Lord! Lord!” 

When Jesus was anxious to speak to Pilate, Pilate 
turned his back. When, afterwards, Pilate spoke to 
Jesus, he got no answer. 

One of the hardest sayings in all fic Scripture is 
that of Our Lord to the ministers sent by the rulers 
and Pharisees to apprehend Him: “You shall seek 
Me, and shall not find Me” (John vii. 34). 


FIFTH DAY 


IMPURITY 


HE particular malice of impurity is the profana- 
tion of the temple of God. No man can under- 
stand it unless he have a touch of mysticism. A mat- 
ter-of-fact person with a tendency toward naturalism, 
if not materialism, will say that this kind of sin is 
the most natural thing in the world, a reminiscence 
of our animal or barbarian or savage ancestry. He 
will say that we have come up through animalism, 
and that we have not yet got entirely into a higher 
grade of being. We are on the way, but still we are 
animals. But Revelation tells another story. We are 
children of God. We are the temple of God. Our 
bodies are endowed with a supernatural dignity. We 
are not in the animal class. We are ina class by our- 
selves, midway between beasts and angels. “What is 
man that thou art mindful of him? ... Thou hast 
made him a little less than the angels, thou hast 
crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps. viii. 5, 6). 
We are not flesh and blood alone. We are flesh and 
blood and mind and soul and the indwelling God. 
We are members of the mystic Body of Christ. Im- 
purity is violation of a body that belongs to Christ. 
Its malice, so understood, is infinite. “Shall I then 
take the members of Christ, and make them the mem- 
bers of a harlot?” says St. Paul. “God forbid!” 
(1 Cor. vi. 15.) 


SIXTH DAY 


CALLING Goop EVIL 


HE impure justify sin and scold or ridicule the 
pure. They inject impurity into art, literature, 
life. To them, it is joy, gaiety. It is nature. It is 
beauty. On the other hand, purity, they say, is prud- 
ery. Modesty is an affectation. A saint is a kill-joy. 
And so onand soon. The impure really believe these 
‘things. It is probably a mistake to imagine that they 
are salving their consciences with these statements, 
knowing them to be false. They think them true. 
“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see”; 
cursed are the impure, for they cannot see. Perhaps 
they will never see. What can be done with them? 
Nothing, perhaps, until the fire of passion burns down 
and the smoke of vice clears away. Then they may 
turn to God and offer Him a burned-out body, broken, 
incapable of passion, and a soul embittered, dis- 
gusted, disillusioned. They turn to God for a pos- 
sible solace and for fear of a possible Hell. Is this 
religion? 


SEVENTH DAY 


THE MEASURE OF MORALITY 


Y what shall we measure morality? By the dicta 
of theologians? If they acquit us, shall we ac- 
count ourselves wholly virtuous? Is a sacramental 
absolution all that we desire? Having received the 
absolution, can we be free and happy and satisfied, 
or shall we cry, Amplius lava me—*“Wash me yet 
more’’—after we have been cleansed by the sacra- 
ment of forgiveness? 

“Christian morality is no mere Self-restraint, no 
mechanical movement within prescribed rules, no 
mere punctiliousness, but ardent and active, exceed- 
ing duty and outstripping requirement” (Ecce Homo).: 

The slavish Christian asks, “What do the theolo- 
gians say? Is it venial sin, or mortal sin, or imper- 
fection, or no sin at all? What is the probable opin- 
ion? I shall learn that, and then do what I may with- 
out mortal sin.” What an abomination that a Chris- 
tian should take advantage of theology to outwit God! 
The Pharisees followed the Talmud in place of the 
Word of God. They put the traditions of the ancients 
on a par with the divine Scripture, or above it. Shall 
we seize upon casuistic decisions to defeat or to avoid 
the good pleasure of God? Has Christ taught in vain? 
To consult theologians in order to avoid consulting 
God, is Phariseeism. 


EIGHTH DAY 


THE Souv’s LAST CHANCE 


HE most terrible crime is to smother the inspira- 
tions of the indwelling God. This is the unpar- 
donable sin. Conscience may be so many times 
beaten down that finally it has not the courage to rise 
and speak. Even God may become discouraged. 
Jesus said, “If I speak to you, you believe not,” so He 
‘was silent. When God is discouraged and gives no 
more inspirations, when He grows weary and will no 
longer say, “Do this,” or “Do that,” then probation is 
over, the soul is lost, and eternal darkness has begun. 
The rest of life is only prolixitas mortis, the delay of 
death. The unpardonable sin has been committed. 
This is the most horrible risk that the habitual sin- 
ner takes. Any inspiration of God may be the last. 
The warning in conscience may never be repeated. 
The last whisper of Christ dies within the sinner’s 
soul. He will never hear God or conscience again. 
If so, he imagines that he is safe. He hears no rebuke, 
he feels no compunction. He says, “I have outgrown 
my former scrupulosity. I am no longer so narrow 
in my views. I am become free.” But he is lost. 


NINTH DAY 


HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD 


MAN practised in woodcraft, out of a babel of 
sounds in a tropical forest, will recognize any 
one. He may hear the calls of a hundred, a thousand, 
different species of birds, squawking, hooting, whis- 
tling, singing, but he says, “There! listen to the note 
of such and such a bird.” The novice strains his ears, 
but cannot catch the particular sound. “TI listen,” 
says he, “but I cannot recognize it. How can you 
know it?” And the master says, “I could tell that 
note if every leaf on every tree had a different voice 
and all were speaking. I could tell that note in the 
midst of any tumult.” 

So, the man who knows the voice of God, hears it 
anywhere—in the midst of crowded streets, at an en- 
tertainment, on a battle field, in his soul, even when 
temptation is making pandemonium within. He can 
recognize the voice of God anywhere. 


TENTH DAY 


THE TRUTH ONLY IN CONFESSION 


‘"T*HOU, O Lord, didst turn me round into my own 

sight. I had set myself, as it were, upon my 
own back, because I was unwilling to see myself, and 
now Thou didst place me before my own eyes, so that 
I beheld how ugly I was, how deformed and filthy 
and spotted and ulcerous. I beheld and shuddered, 
yet whither could I flee from myself? Thou didst 
force my eyes to gaze upon my very features so that 
I might discover and loathe my iniquity. I knew it, 
but feigned ignorance and winked at it and forgot it” 
(St. Augustine, Confessions, viii. 7). 

The primary advantage of confession is that it tells 
us the truth about ourselves. It is like a rehearsal 
for the day of judgment. Nowhere else can we get 
the actual truth. Friends flatter us. Enemies malign 
us. They both deceive us. We shall never see our- 
selves as we really are, until we look into the mirror 
of the eyes of God in the day of our particular judg- 
ment. But here on earth we can anticipate that ter- 
rible interview, every time we practise confession, if 
Wwe examine our conscience honestly, and accuse our- 
selves unshrinkingly. But we must not “feign igno- 
rance,” or “wink at our iniquity.” 


ELEVENTH DAY 


TEMPTATION 


ATCH ye, and pray that ye enter not into temp- 

tation” (Matt. xxvi. 41). Generally, we place 
the emphasis upon “watch and pray.” Why not 
sometimes put it upon the other words, “that ye enter 
not’? Once we are actually in temptation—deeply 
in—it may be too much for us. Temptation produces 
a peculiar intoxication of the mind, a sort of paral- 
ysis of the will, an hypnosis of the soul, or, on the 
other hand, a diabolical recklessness, and sin becomes 
almost inevitable. It is better to stave off temptation, 
not to “enter in.” 

If, however, temptation comes, we shall still fight 
our hardest, knowing that we can always win. 

The advice of Polonius to Laertes is not bad, for a 
conflict either between man and man or neeyeee man 
and the devil: 

Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, 
Bear’t that the opposéd may beware of thee. 


TWELFTH DAY 


PREPARATION AGAINST TEMPTATION. 


HE secret of success in the conflict with sin is, in 
these wise words of Father Maturin: “We know 
well enough what is definitely right and what is 
wrong, but there is something else, in itself neither 
right nor wrong, belonging to the debatable land, the 
borderland between right and wrong, the region 
neither of light nor darkness, but of twilight.” The 
soul that dwells under the law of this land, will cer- 
tainly end in passing over into the kingdom of dark- 
ness and sin. The heat of the battle does not lie in 
the direct conflict with evil, but with things neither 
right nor wrong. The man who determines he will 
not do what is positively wrong, but will do every- 
thing else that he wishes, will find, in the long run, 
that he cannot stand far off from actual sin.”—Self- 
Knowledge and Self-Discipline, p. 96. 

The moral, therefore, is to get ready for the battle 
before the battle begins. An enervated soldier, fat 
and soft and accustomed to luxury, cannot fight. 
When the rigor of discipline is applied in times of 
peace, he may protest, “The war is not on. I shall go 
easy.” The answer is simple: The war is always on. 
They win in wartime who win in peacetime—prep- 
aration for battle is part of the battle. 


THIRTEENTH DAY 


FIGHTING TEMPTATION 


HEN a man is attacked, he must defend himself 
with every means at hand. The soldier in the 
trench shoots his rifle, flings hand-grenades, bombs, 
bits of steel, sticks, stones; he jabs with his bayonet, 
fights with hands, feet, teeth, anything, everything. 
So when the devil attacks, fight him with anything 
at hand—with reason, with shame, with defiance, 
with the name of Jesus, the sign of the cross, with 
the remembrance of one’s dignity, with the thought 
of confession, with remembrance of the altar-rail, 
with anything, everything—but win at all hazards. 
The devil has no chivalry. If we have a weak spot, 
he will attack us in that spot. If while we fence with 
him, he knocks the sword from our hand, he will give 
us no chance to recover the weapon. He has no 
scruples, no principles, no honor. When we battle 
with Satan, there is no time for a display of knightly 
courtesies. Fight him relentlessly. 


FOURTEENTH DAY 


CONFIDENCE 


‘THE slothful man saith: There is a lion without, 

I shall be slain in the midst of the streets” 
(Prov. xxii. 13). In temptation we are inclined to 
say, “There is a lion within, I shall be slain if I face 
him.” 

It is recorded that when the martyrs faced the lions 
in the arena, frequently the lions turned tail and fled: 
A wild-beast hunter has said that any animal will run 
from a man, if the man is unafraid. If we face the 
beast, and are unafraid, he will slink away. Satan, 
too, is a coward. Face him fearlessly and he will dis- 
appear. 

How can we be certain of ourselves? Only if God 
be in the soul. “The Lord is my light and my salva- 
tion, whom shall I fear? ...If armies in camp 
should stand against me, my heart shall not fear” 
(Ps: axevin) tet3o 


FIFTEENTH DAY 


THE GoD AND THE BRUTE IN HUMAN NATURE 


HE question is asked, “What is man? A brute 
or a god?” The answer is, “Both.” A certain 
American poet prefers animals to men because, he 
says, the beasts “do not complain about their sins.” 
But neither do they boast of the deity within them. 
The brute is simple enough. He is only a brute. But 
man is complex. He is a brute and a god. That is 
why he complains of his sins. If he were only a god, 
he would have no sin. If he were only a beast, he 
would know no sin. But he is both. There is the 
anguish. There is the cause of strife and restlessness, 
of divine discontent. 

“Tam aworm andno man.” “I ama child of God.” 
Each statement alone is false. Both statements to- 
gether are true. ‘Man is an animal,” is false, if you 
say nothing more. “Man is a spirit,” is false, if you 
say nothing more. Put the two together—the animal 
and the spirit, the beast and the angel—and you have 
that mysterious, incomprehensible, apparently impos- 
sible combination that is called man, the divine clod, 
the spiritual beast, the celestial clay, infinite noth- 
ingness, the “paragon of animals,” and the “quin- 
tessence of dust.” 


SIXTEENTH DAY 


Not ALTOGETHER Bap 


T is a mistake in spiritual tactics, and it is dishonor 
to God, to cringe and to cry, “Oh God, there is no 
good in me. I am altogether bad.” We are not Cal- 
vinists. We do not believe in total depravity. If a 
man keeps on telling himself, and telling God, that he 
is totally bad, he will make himself bad by auto-sug- 
gestion, if by no other means. And in that case, when 
he falls, he will be in danger of saying, “What can I 
expect of myself? I can do no better.” On the other 
hand, if he believes in his dignity as a human soul, a 
child of God, he will not fall so easily nor so often, 
and if he falls he will be shocked quickly back into re- 
pentance. He will recoil from sin not merely because 
he respects himself, but because he stands in awe of 
God within him. 


SEVENTEENTH DAY 


LOWERING THE MORAL TONE 


66 E turn away at first in disgust and shrinking 
from sins that later on enslave us. We have 
not yet been sufficiently habituated to other things 
which relax the soul and weaken the voice of con- 
science and lower the moral tone” (Father Maturin). 
There is the secret: “lower the moral tone.” If this 
be done, anything may happen, and when it happens, 
it will not seem horrible. Even ugly sins will appear 
beautiful. A year ago, ten years ago, a man would 
have been shocked or disgusted at the very mention 
of them. To-day he not only commits them, but jus- 
tifies them. His moral tone has been lowered. 
Physicians tell us that diseases are caught only by 
those whose vitality is lowered. Athletes explain de- 
feat by saying, “I was out of condition.” If our spir- 
itual vitality is high, sin cannot find a lodging place 
in the soul. If we are “in condition,” Satan himself 
cannot defeat us. 


EIGHTEENTH DAY 


CONSCIENCE 


EWMAN calls conscience “the aboriginal Vicar of 
Christ.” It is that, and more. Even the Pope 
has less authority than conscience. The dictates of 
conscience are, in a true sense, the dictates of God. 
It is conceivable that one might obey the Vicar of 
Christ only when he commands. But one should obey 
‘God whether He commands or merely suggests. 
What folly then to say, “Conscience in this case only 
insinuates. I may disobey; when it commands great 
things, I shall obey.” It is as though one said, “‘God 
gives me a hint, a suggestion, or expresses a wish, but 
He has not said, ‘Do,’ or ‘Do not,’ “Thou shalt,’ or 
‘Thou shalt not,’ and until He gives me a command- 
ment or a prohibition, I shall do as I please. I am not 
bound to heed every wish of God.’ One who thinks 
or acts thus has no idea of the majesty of God—or 
of conscience. 


NINETEENTH DAY 


SIN AND PEACE 


HE sinner cries, “Peace! peace!” but there is no 

peace. He has tortured conscience, and in turn, 
conscience tortures him. There might be peace if 
man could be dehumanized. If God would only say, 
“You act like a beast, and therefore a beast shall you 
be. I extract your conscience. I leave you only a 
brute.” But no, conscience remains, and while con- 
science remains, there can be no peace in sin. 

A man may reply, “You are mistaken. I sin and 
sin repeatedly, and yet I feel no unhappiness. I am 
content.” We retort, “You are abnormal, sub-human. 
You are a freak of nature. You are a monstrosity, a 
terrible curiosity, a man without a soul.” For a man 
without a conscience is a man without a soul. 

He may be content, but he is worse off than if he 
were discontent. Discontent might goad him to vir- 
tue. The sting of conscience is evidence that God 
has not abandoned the soul. To be abandoned by 
God, is to begin one’s hell. “Where Thou art, there 
is heaven, and where Thou art not, there is death 
and grievous hell.” 


TWENTIETH DAY 


SIN AND THE RELIGIOUS NATURE 


ERE is a curious and terrible anomaly. One may 
have a religious temperament, and yet be im- 
moral. St. Augustine was essentially religious, and 
yet remained for many years in an evil life. One even 
greater than St. Augustine, King David, was passion- 
ately religious. In the Psalms, even before his con- 
version, he speaks to God, he thinks aloud to God, dis- 
cusses everything with God, and yet he fell into ter- 
rible sin, murder, and adultery. 
_ Those who are accustomed to form snap judgments 
are quick to cry “hypocrite” if a man professes fine 
principles, and yet lives ignobly. But perhaps he is 
not a hypocrite. He may really believe in and admire 
the very highest spiritual doctrine. He may have the 
saints for his heroes. He may love and desire sanc- 
tity, and yet be spasmodically, if not habitually, sin- 
ful. “‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 
For virtue and for salvation, something more than a 
religious temperament is necessary. ‘That “some- 
thing more” is the constant grace of God. 


TWENTY-FIRST DAY 


THE STING OF TEMPTATION 


HERE is a horrible fascination about sin even 

while the will is rejecting it. And the acme of 
the agony is that the fascination is not simply over 
the lower members. If the will and the reason were 
solid and sure against the rebellion of the flesh, there 
could be no very great danger. The veins might run 
with liquid fire, and all the bodily frame feel the 
fierce heat of passion, but if the will were whole- 
heartedly against sin, the temptation would be in- 
significant. But the will wills, and wills not, at one 
and the same time. There is the mystery and there 
is the torture. 

St. Augustine says: “The will commands the body 
and there is instant obedience. The mind commands 
the body and there is instant rebellion. The mind 
commands the will, and though it is one and the 
same, it will not hear.” ‘‘The flesh lusteth against the 
spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” That were 
temptation enough. But the true temptation is when 
the spirit lusteth against the spirit. 


TWENTY-SECOND DAY 


HIRED JESTERS 


N ancient days, kings and nobles had their court 

fools, to jest and play pranks when there was dan- 
ger that serious thoughts might come; and we to-day 
hire buffoons and jesters, and we pay them well, to 
banter away every serious thought. Our entertain- 
ments, our amusements, are part of the conspiracy to 
‘prevent our thinking upon life and death and what 
comes after death. The theaters and dance halls, 
fashionable restaurants and cabarets, are not fre- 
quented by those who are spontaneously gay, but by 
those who are gloomy. They seek an artificial means 
of dispelling the gloom. They fear a quiet evening 
at home almost as much as they would dread a day 
of spiritual retreat. They must not be alone with 
their thoughts. Hence the need of an army of actors 
and actresses, and “entertainers.” When the king 
was melancholy, the court fool was to make him 
smile. When we are melancholy, the hired come- 
dians must make us forget. Their business is to 
drive away “the demon, thought.” But some day we 
shall have to think. Why not do it now? 


TWENTY-THIRD DAY 


“THE CHILDREN OF THE KINGDOM” 


HEN John the Baptist upbraided the Jews and 
threatened them with possible damnation, they 
retorted indignantly, “We are the children of 
Abraham.” But John the Baptist only replied, ‘‘Chil- 
dren of Abraham! I say to you that God is able, of 
these stones, to raise up children to Abraham.” And 
Christ told them, “Many shall come from the east and 
the west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac 
and Jacob, but the children of the kingdom shall be 
cast out.” Two things Christ Our Savior hated par- 
ticularly: first, hypocrisy, and, second, mechanical re- 
ligion. The second is as bad as the first. The Phar- 
isees were guilty of both. They wore their phylac- 
teries broad. They followed the traditions of the an- 
cients. They fasted. They were rigorists for disci- 
pline. Yet Jesus told them that the harlots would 
enter the kingdom of God before them. 

There are those to-day who fancy that their salva- 
tion is secure, because they have been validly bap- 
tized, because their brow has been signed with the 
sign of the cross, because they attend religious serv- 
ice with fair regularity, because they make their 
_ Easter duty, and because they expect to be anointed 
with oil on their deathbed. But if they neglect “‘the 
weightier things of the law,” justice, mercy, charity, 
purity, their fate has already been spoken. The har- 
lots shall enter the kingdom of heaven sooner than 
they. 


TWENTY-FOURTH DAY 


THOSE WHo WILL Not THINK 


HERE are those who deny or ignore the impor- 
tance of human life. They have no philosophy. 
They practise no religion. To them human existence 
presents no problems. They have never spent a 
sleepless night or even one intense moment ponder- 
ing over the question of their eternal destiny. Some 
of them are pleasure-lovers, and their motto is, Dum 
vivimus, vivamus—‘While we live, let us live.” ‘‘Eat, 
drink, and be merry.”’ They also have another motto, 
which, however, they do not shout aloud, ““Whatever 
you do, don’t think. Thought is fatal to contentment. 
If you would be joyful, don’t think.” To such as 
these, a time like Lent, which is a time for serious 
thought, of meditation on profound mysteries, is only 
an intrusion, an impertinence. They will have none 
of it. Their entertainments, their jollifications, their 
reckless amusements, continue throughout the Lenten 
season as at other times. Nothing can persuade 
them to stop and think. 


TWENTY-FIFTH DAY 


THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT 


INCE the war, many books have been printed, and 
sermons and lectures delivered, upon the moral- 
ity of nations. It has become customary for men to 
speak of nations as if they were individuals; as if 
virtue and vice, and free-will and responsibility, could 
be predicated of a nation as of an individual. Men 
speak of the “Responsibility of Germany,” “The Soul 
of Russia,” “The Fate of Austria,” “The Crimes of 
England,” “The Destiny of Ireland,” and so on. Now 
all these phrases are only metaphorically true. Ed- 
mund Burke, the great statesman, declared that you 
must not make an indictment against a whole nation. 
Likewise, you must not impute responsibility or guilt 
or vice or virtue to a whole nation. Neither Russia 
nor England will be judged by the eternal Judge. 
Neither France nor Germany will be called upon to 
give an account of its stewardship. But every indi- 
vidual in every nation will be judged. We shall never 
reform the world by pooling our responsibilities, by 
imputing sin to a nation. But if we can persuade 
every individual that he, personally, is accountable 
before God on the day of judgment, then indeed shall 
the face of the earth be changed. 


TWENTY-SIXTH DAY 


CHARACTER 


ALPH WALDO EMERSON, one of the chief » 
spokesmen for naturalism, says: “Every land- 
scape I behold, every friend I meet, every act I per- 
form, every pain I suffer, leaves me a different man 
than they found me.” We Christians go infinitely 
beyond such philosophers as Emerson. We say, not 
only that all these experiences leave us different than 
they found us, but that they have eternal conse- 
quences. All that we do or think or suffer in life not 
only makes or unmakes our character, but determines 
our destiny. Every prayer we say, or refuse to say, 
every good inspiration we accept or reject, every 
temptation we endure, all our successes and failures, 
our victories and defeats, are written with a “pen of 
iron and the point of a diamond” in the fiber of our 
souls, and on this written record we shall be judged. 
On the day of judgment God will not ask, “What 
have you done?” but “What are you?” If we know 
what a man is, we know something infinitely more 
important. To do something is good advice. To be 
something is better. We shall be saved or lost not by 
accident, not by magic, not by force of circumstances, 
but by what, with God’s grace, we have made of 
ourselves. 


TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY 


THE INDELIBLE RECORD 


F a man, in the course of a speech in court or in 
Congress, speaks a word in passion and later re- 
tracts and begs that the word be counted as not said, 
it may be expunged from the record. But there is no 
expunging from the eternal record. The recording 
angel says curtly, like Pilate, Quod scripsi, scripsi— 
“What I have written, I have written.” From the 
very beginning of the use of reason until the moment 
of our last sigh, everything that we have done and 
thought and felt and suffered, is recorded, and on the 
day of judgment our fate shall depend upon that rec- 
ord. Some one has said wisely, “Sow an act and reap 
a habit, sow a habit and reap a destiny.” This is good 
Catholic doctrine. There is no other doctrine that 
makes life or character so important. We impute 
an eternal, an infinite, value to character. 


TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY 


THE MEANING OF LIFE 


O judge from the way we spend our days, life 
might be only a comedy. Throughout the year, 
we pass the time, working and playing, eating and 
drinking, and making merry, as if these were the sum 
total of the things that concern us; as if our existence 
upon this earth had no very profound meaning; as if 
life were indeed a comedy, marred occasionally by the 
intrusion of some painful episodes, but generally 
pleasant and sure to end happily. The truth is that 
life is tragic. We know that best when we are alone, 
alone with God. 

The life that appears upon the surface is a sham. 
The soul-life, the inner life, the life of mental and 
spiritual struggle, is terribly real. Its considerable 
and inconclusive victories, its tragic failures, and the 
always impending possibility of final disaster, make 
even the most prosaic life dramatic, if not tragic. 

As with life, so with religion. Superficially, our re- 
ligion seems to be a matter of routine, of form, of 
ceremony and regular observance. In the lives of 
some it even appears to be a matter of play, of enjoy- 
ment, a high sort of pleasure. But, fundamentally, 
religion is solemn and awful. The basic fact of our 
faith is a hideous tragedy, the Crucifixion. In the 
Lenten season we look beneath the surface of life, 
delve deeper down into profound mystery, into the 
suffering and death of the Son of God. 


TWENTY-NINTH DAY 


SALVATION AS A GAMBLE 


OME seem to imagine that we are saved or lost by 
chance. Salvation is good luck. Damnation is 
bad luck. 

Remember the legend of the sinner who fled from 
the plague in Florence, lifting up his voice and cry- 
ing out: “I have outwitted Thee, Domeneddio.” But 
he came back too soon to the pest-ridden city, fell ill, 
and on his deathbed cried out: “Thou hast outwitted 
me, Domeneddio.” He played a game of chance 
against God, and lost. Some moderns seem to have 
the same idea. “I may sin,” they say, “but if I get to 
confession and receive absolution before anything 
happens to me, I shall be saved. I may go about the 
streets in the state of mortal sin. If I meet with an 
accident, I shall be damned; but, barring accident, I 
Shall be saved.” “Take a chance,” is their motto. 

We can understand a gambler staking a thousand 
dollars on the turn of a wheel, or the color of a card; 
we can understand the speculator staking a year’s 
earnings, or a fortune, on the rise or the fall of a 
market; we can understand an emperor risking his 
throne on the battle field. But what of the man who 
will risk his everlasting soul in a gamble against God 
or against the devil? 

But what a curious concept of salvation, and of 
damnation. Salvation is not to be had by luck. It 
is an abiding condition of soul. It is achieved not by 
accident, but by constant strife, by repeated victory, 
by permanent character. 


THIRTIETH DAY 


DEATH 


UPPOSE it were said, “You shall make ready for 
a journey. You shall start immediately. You 
shall make no stops. You shall continue straight on 
to your destination, and when you arrive at your 
destination, you shall die.” Suppose? It is no sup- 
position. We have begun the journey. We are on 
our way. We shall make no stops. We shall arrive 
more quickly than we think at our destination. And 
death is our destination. 

We shudder at the thought of a condemned crim- 
inal counting off his days on a calendar hung upon 
the wall of his cell. So many days remaining, and 
again so many days—and so few! The condemned 
criminal knows how many days remain to him. 
When he checks off a day, he realizes fully what it 
means. We do not know how many days remain to 
us. And when we come to the end of a day, we turn 
the page of our calendar without any realization of 
what it means. Yet we may be nearer to the end of 
our calendar than the man in the death cell. The 
criminal adds and subtracts’hours and minutes and 
seconds. Our hours and minutes and seconds are 
numbered. Says Our Savior, “The hairs of your head 
are numbered.” 


THIRTY-FIRST DAY 


SIn Is SLAVERY 


LMOST everyone who sins, claims to do so in the 
name of freedom. “I am my own master, I 
plan my own life, I shall do what I please. No one 
shall prevent me. Am I not free? Is not my life my 
own? I will not be bound with restrictions, rules, 
regulations, commandments.” 

But listen to such a one five years, ten years, twenty 
years hence. Sickening of sin, he would return to 
God. His spiritual director says to him, “Be strong. 
Assert your independence. Break away from evil 
habits. Stand erect. Stiffen your moral backbone. 
Set your jaw firm. Defy the devil. Be free.” And 
he replies: “Father, you know not what you are ask- 
ing. Sin has enchained me. Habit has enslaved me. 
I cannot assert myself. I have tried and have failed 
again and again. I have lost confidence. My courage 
is broken. I am a slave.” 

Sin is not freedom. Sin is slavery. 


THIRTY-SECOND DAY 


HELL 


ET the word stand. It was spoken by Our Sav- 
ior. We cannot retract it. We will not apol- 
ogize for it. Naturally, men do not like the word. 
But our liking or our disliking can neither create nor 
annihilate a fact. Men deny hell. But they also de- 
nied Christ. Christ was not false because men denied 
Him. They deny God, but God does not wither away. 
They deny sin. They cry, “There is no sin. There 
is no sin.” But sin remains, as big as a mountain. 
You cannot frighten away sin with a loud cry. You 
cannot demolish hell by denying it. 

Dives, the rich man in the Gospel, did not believe in 
hell. He believed in eating and drinking and making 
merry. He believed in good things and a good time, 
but when he died, says Our Savior, he was “buried 
in hell.”” Then he cried out, “I am tormented in this 
flame. Send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his 
finger in water to cool my tongue.” Abraham replied, 
“Between us and you there is fixed a great chaos.” 
Still he cries again, “O Father, send him to my 
father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may 
testify unto them lest they also come into this place 
of torments.” But Abraham again replied, “They 
have Moses and the prophets. If they hear not Moses 
and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise 
again from the dead.” 


THIRTY-THIRD DAY 


THE COURAGE OF CHRIST 


HRIST loved to call Himself the “Lamb of God,” 
but He was also the “Lion of the tribe of Juda.” 
Courageous, fearless, uncompromising, absolutely 
self-consistent, incapable of being browbeaten, un- 
abashed before kings, unflinching when in the hands 
of bloodthirsty barbarians. He flung out His anath- 
emas against those in high places, pointing the finger 
at them, calling them by name. He was incorrigibly 
reckless about His own safety. He never apologized. 
He never recanted. On trial for His life before a 
vacillating governor, He might have had His free- 
dom, if He had simply opened His mouth and de- 
manded justice. The Roman would have been com- 
pelled to give Him justice. But Jesus uttered no plea. 
He was stripped and whipped, as a foretaste of the 
tortures in store for Him, but He never whimpered. 
True, He uttered a cry of anguish in the garden. 
But it was sin, nor torture, that wrung that cry from 
His heart. There is no record of any cry when He 
came to the top of the Hill of Calvary and was bidden 
to lie down and be nailed to the wood. The burly Ro- 
man soldiers might have learned a lesson in bravery 
from Him. 

His example has been the inspiration of all the 
martyrs. Young girls and boys in the amphi- 
theater were braver than the noblest Romans. Jesus 
is the “strength of martyrs.” 


THIRTY-FOURTH DAY 


THE TERRIBLE MEEK 


HE character of Christ is paradoxical. He is meek 
and humble and non-resisting. But He is un- 
yielding as adamant. Any sinner in the streets of 
Jerusalem might hoot at Him, and arouse not resent- 
ment, but pity. The thief on the cross could blas- — 
pheme against Him, and be granted paradise upon 
repentance. It might have seemed to some, that Jesus 
was absurdly mild. But no one could intimidate Him. 
Neither Pilate nor Herod could overawe Him. Per- 
haps the reason that Pilate “‘went out,” was that he 
was withering under the glance of the forlorn Naz- 
arene. He could not bear the look in the Savior’s 
eye. As for Herod, he could not even persuade Jesus 
to speak a word. Jesus was not uneasy. But the 
King and the Governor were both in dismay. 

The saints, particularly the martyrs, are like Christ. 
they are as gentle as doves, and as courageous as 
tigers. Face to face with death, they make no plea 
for pity. They laugh in the face of an Emperor. 
_ They spit on the statues of the gods. With eighty 
thousand pagans in the Circus Maximus howling at 
them, they do not even blanch. They are masters of 
the Emperor, and of the mob. 


THIRTY-FIFTH DAY 


PETER 


HERE may be those who claim to feel secure 

against mortal sin. They are offended at the 
bare supposition that they may possibly be damned. 
They say: “I need not be threatened with hell-fire 
and damnation. I am not to be bulldozed. I am no 
criminal. There need be no fear of my going 
astray.” 

The answer is Peter. Prince of the Apostles, first 
Pope, chosen of God—yet he swore: before high 
heaven—and three times—that he never knew Jesus 
Christ! 

“The cedars of Lebanon have fallen. Stars have 
fallen from heaven. They whose works seemed 
praiseworthy have fallen to the very lowest. They 
that did eat the Bread of angels, have been found 
contented with the husks that were thrown to the 
swine.” “Who art thou, O man, that thou dost 
glory?” 


THIRTY-SIXTH DAY 


JUDAS 


HE cup of Our Savior was filling. Every drop was 

bitterer than the one before. Loneliness, dis- 
couragement, disappointment, profound sadness, had 
settled down upon His heart. Now comes a friend, 
a disciple, one who had walked with Him, talked with 
Him, enjoyed His confidence, who had reclined at 
table with Him. The Lord had been seeking sym- 
pathy. Has Judas come to assure Him of support? 
The Lord had been craving the touch of a human 
hand, longing for the embrace of some one who loved 
Him. Has Judas come to console Him? 

Judas has come, but his handclasp is the clammy 
touch of the traitor, his kiss is the kiss of a viper. In 
place of a word of comfort, he speaks the terrible 
salutation of the hypocrite, “Hail, Rabbi!” 

Judas has received his retribution: all the world 
damns Judas. And it would seem that there was 
only one Judas in the history of mankind. Is there 
only one? Only one who has sat at the feet of Christ, 
looked into His eyes, called Him “Lord” and “Mas- 
ter,” only one whose lips have been moistened with 
the Precious Blood in Holy Communion, only one 
whose tongue has been touched and hallowed by the 
flesh of Jesus, only one who has saluted Him, “My 
Lord and my God,” and then has played the part of a 
traitor? 


THIRTY-SEVENTH DAY 


THE CONFLICT FOR CHASTITY 


HE interior conflict is particularly stern in mat- 

ters that pertain to chastity. The strongest of 
human passions is love. And even when perverted, 
it still remains the strongest of passions. When love 
is pure, there is nothing nobler. When corrupted, 
there is nothing more base—Corruptio optimi pes- 
sima. Love leads to purity or, under aberration, to 
impurity. We would go through fire and water to 
indulge passion. We would brave the devil to over- 
come passion. Strange anomaly, strange contradic- 
tion! Our nature drives us toward sin, but the same 
nature shames us away from sin. 

The nobler nature and the baser nature may fight 
interminably, and with tragic results, unless the 
nobler nature be reénforced by divine grace. Then 
the outcome need never be in question. 


THIRTY-EIGHTH DAY 


CIVILIZATION THROUGH MARY 


HRISTIAN civilization consists chiefly in the re- 
finement of manners and the purification of 
morals; the suppression of brutality and of debauch- 
ery. Pagan civilization is different from the Chris- 
tian chiefly in two things, cruelty and impurity. It 
is a significant fact that those two vices are always 
companions. The impure are always cruel like 
Herod and Nero and Caligula. Gladiatorial combats 
and Lupercalian orgies always go together. ‘“Volup- 
tuousness is not barren. It brings forth a daughter, 
Ferocity.” Lust is more fruitful in murders and 
Suicides than any other passion, not excepting greed. 
True civilization means the annihilation or—if anni- 
hilation be impossible—the minimizing of lust and 
cruelty in all their forms. Grant that, and we can 
see the great wisdom of the Catholic Church in setting 
before mankind the example of Mary, the Mother of 
Jesus. She would civilize us and Christianize us by 
_ gentleness and purity. 


THIRTY-NINTH DAY 


HELL 


EOPLE say that hell cannot be, for it is too ter- 
rible. Let us suppose that some second Rip Van 
Winkle was awakened from a long sleep during the 
World War, and suppose that he came down from 
the mountains, into the midst of the crowds standing 
about a war bulletin, and asked, “What’s up?” Some 
patient citizen takes the poor ignoramus aside and 
explains to him: “The great war is on. All of Eu- 
rope, and a great part of Asia and the ends of the 
earth, are blazing with warfare. This is no petty 
Revolutionary War or Civil War or Napoleonic War. 
It is a World War, raging along a line of hundreds of 
miles in the east and in the west. There are eight 
to ten million men in one army, and twelve to four- 
teen million men in the other. Warfare is covering 
the earth and the sea and the sky; even the waters 
under the earth are filled with death-dealing engines. 
Cities are bombarded from the sky; towns and vil- 
lages swept off the map with great shells sent from 
sixty miles away; tens of thousands of corpses lying 
unburied in No Man’s Land, where they putrefy and 
scatter pestilence.” The new Rip Van Winkle would 
probably say: “It cannot be.” It is too terrible. 
There is no war.” 


FORTIETH DAY 


THE SINS OF THE WORLD 


OW quickly, how easily, how smoothly we say 
that phrase, “‘the sins of the world.” How ut- 
terly nothing it means to us. But if we could look 
out, not upon the whole world, but upon one city, 
just for one night—nay, one moment of one night— 
what should we see? Upon the streets, unfortunate 
creatures, leering, and luring souls into unmention- 
able depravity. In a thousand rendezvous of vice, all 
manner of debauchery. In theaters and dance halls, 
indecency rampant. Unfaithful husbands, breaking 
the troth that was plighted before the altar of Christ. 
Not only impurity, but cruelty, “man’s inhumanity 
to man,” that has made countless thousands mourn. 
The unbelievable savagery of the human heart man- 
ifest in war and in peace. 

Irreligion. Millions of men and women, ignoring 
God, denying Him, or blaspheming against Him. 
Nineteen centuries after Christ, myriads of men who 
_ never say, “My God, my Savior, my Jesus.” 

Not only impurity, and cruelty, and irreligion, but 
a world of other sins. Saints have swooned at the 
imagination of it. Priests in the confessional have 
turned sick at heart when some infinitesimal frag- 
ments of it were whispered in their ears. But there 
was Jesus on that night in Gethsemane, saturated 
with the sin of the world; broken-hearted; crushed 
totally. 


FORTY-FIRST DAY 


GETHSEMANE 


IT you here till I go yonder and pray,” said Jesus, 
and He began to be sorrowful and to be sad. 
And He said, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death. 
Sit you here and watch with Me,” and He went for- 
ward a little and fell on His face and prayed, “‘Father, 
if it be possible, let this chalice pass,” and He cometh 
and findeth His disciples sleeping, and He saith to 
them, “Could you not watch one hour with Me?” 
Observe that we are called upon to pity our God. 
Jesus had always been the master of Himself and all 
about Him. He had always been easily in control of 
men and of nature, serene, calm, self-confident. But 
now the spirit that never had quailed, has given way. 
The lips that never before had murmured, are open 
with a cry of anguish. He that had always com- 
forted the disciples, seeks comfort from them. He is 
restless with anguish. He kneels and He rises. He 
goes forward and returns. He flings Himself on the 
ground. He cries out to heaven, asking if the chalice 
may even yet be snatched away. He rises, He turns, 
gropes around in the darkness, feeling for the touch 
of a human hand, listening for the sound of a human 
voice to console Him. ‘“‘He looketh for some one to 
have pity on Him and there was no man.” From man 
He turns to God and from God He turns again to 
man, and there is no comfort either from God or 
from man. 


FORTY-SECOND DAY 


THE BLoopy SWEAT 


= IS sweat became as drops of blood trickling 

down upon the ground.” No lash, no scourge 
upon His back, no crown of thorns upon His head, 
no brutal fist had crashed against His face, no sword 
had pierced His side, no spikes were in His hands or 
feet, no one had touched Him—yet He was bleeding. 
‘The concentrated sin of the world, invisible, intan- 
gible, had taken Him in its powerful grip and crushed 
Him until His heart broke, and the blood oozed out 
from His veins, out through the pores of His skin, 
staining His garments and moistening the soil of the 
garden. 


FORTY-THIRD DAY 


PILATE 


E say that Pilate was a coward. It may be tnar 
we do him wrong. Perhaps there was no hero 
that ever lived who could have held out against the 
mob that day. A mob is always a frightful thing. In 
a mob, men are perhaps literally mad, but on that day 
Pilate was dealing with something even worse than a 
blood-craving mob. He was trying to stand against 
all hell. ‘‘This is your hour, and the power of dark- 
ness,” Jesus had said, and there was awful meaning 
to His words. The gates of hell were opened, and 
the demons, though unseen, swarmed among the 
frantic Jews. There was something preternatural 
about the cries that broke against the stone walls of 
the palace of Pilate. We have never really heard “the 
cry of a lost soul.” But it may be that Pilate heard 
the cries of myriads of demons that afternoon. It 
was hell’s high holiday and every demon was in Jeru- 
salem. The voices of men and devils mingled, and 
the result was enough to chill the heart of even the 
all-powerful and all-courageous God. When Pilate 
heard that shrill, Crucifige! Crucifige! he must have 
said: “These sounds are not the sounds of human 
voices. They are unearthly and diabolical. I cannot 
withstand the fury of hell.” He wonders and 
shudders and surrenders. “Take Him,” he says. 
“Take Him and crucify Him.” 


FORTY-FOURTH DAY 


NATURE ELEVATED BY HOLY COMMUNION 


T. AUGUSTINE has a very significant sentence that 
describes the chief effect of Holy Communion. 
“Thou shalt not change Me into thine own substance, 
as thou changest the food of thy flesh, but thou shalt 
be changed into Mine” (Confessions, vii. 10). Tenny- 
son says in Locksley Hall, speaking to one who had 
thrown herself away upon an unworthy companion, 
“The grossness of his nature shall have power to drag 
thee down.” In the Holy Eucharist, the grossness of 
our nature shall not have power to drag God down. 
The divinity of His nature shall have power to lift us 
up. The Stronger elevates the weaker. 

Man, the highest of creatures upon the earth, takes 
to himself the herbs of the earth, the grains of the 
field, the fruits of the trees. They become part of 
him. They become alive with a life that is human. 
They have been elevated to a scale of being beyond 
their own. In Holy Communion God takes unto Him- 
self our poor human nature, absorbs it, assimilates it 
to His own, imparts to it a life that is superior to its 
own kind of life. The prayer at the Offertory in the 
Mass says beautifully, ““O God Who hast most won- 
derfully created human nature and hast still more 
wonderfully restored it, grant that by this mystery 
of the mingling of the water with the wine, we may 
be made partakers of His divinity, Who became par- 
taker of our humanity, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our 
Lord.” 


FORTY-FIFTH DAY 


CALVARY 


HE contemplation of Calvary is heartbreaking. 

The very name Golgotha connotes a world of woe. 
The ghastly deeds done upon the hill outside Jeru- 
salem are like a nightmare to devoted Christians. 
Even to the imagination the Crucifixion is a hideous 
thing. The swish of scourges upon naked flesh, the 
spatter of blood, the demoniacal cries of the mob of 
fanatics and murderers, the sound of the crunching 
of nails driven powerfully into human flesh and 
sinews, the inhuman shout of triumph when their 
Victim was nailed to His cross, the crude, coarse jest- 
ing, the blasphemous banter, all the unknown, in- 
credible cruelty of an Oriental mob—it is enough to 
make the heart stand still with horror. 

But we have no right to shrink from witnessing 
the tragedy of Calvary. If we know not Calvary, we 
know not Christ. We dare not, like cowardly Chris- 
tians, omit the cross from our Christianity. God for- 
bid we should glory except in the cross of Christ. 


FORTY-SIXTH DAY 


Gop SURRENDERS TO MAN 


HERE is a passage in the Following of Christ, IL., 


11, in which 4 Kempis insists that nothing we can 


offer to God is acceptable unless we offer ourselves. 
“If a man give his whole substance, it is nothing. If 
he do great penance, it is but little. If he attain to all 

knowledge, he is far off still. If he have great virtue 
and very fervent devotion, there is still much wanting 
to him, the one thing which is supremely necessary 
to him.” What is the one thing necessary? “That 
having given all things else to God he give himself.” 

Now, man, recognizing the demand of God that we 
surrender ourselves to Him, boidly retaliates with a 
demand that God surrender Himself to us. Man says 
to God, “Thou mayest multiply Thy favors; Thou 
mayest overwhelm me with gifts, but though Thy 
gifts, temporal and spiritual, be piled in mountains 
before me, my heart remains unsatisfied, my soul is 
discontent. I want not Thy gifts, I want Thee. Par- 
don, my God, if I speak boldly, I speak as Thou hast 
made me. Thou hast made me man, but Thou hast 
given me the cravings of a god. Thou mayest ransack 
all Thy universe, Thou mayest empty Thy treasure- 
house before my feet. Still I demand more, that Thou 
give me Thyself. Thou hast made me for Thyself. 
My heart remains empty until it be filled with Thee.” 
The answer is the Incarnation and the Blessed Sacra- 
ment. 





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